Showing papers by "Pedro Branco published in 2015"

Creativity in the Digital Age

Abstract: This edited book discusses the exciting field of Digital Creativity. Through exploring the current state of the creative industries, the authors show how technologies are reshaping our creative processes and how they are affecting the innovative creation of new products. Readers will discover how creative production processes are dominated by digital data transmission which makes the connection between people, ideas and creative processes easy to achieve within collaborative and co-creative environments. Since we rely on our senses to understand our world, perhaps of more significance is that technologies through 3D printing are returning from the digital to the physical world. Written by an interdisciplinary group of researchers this thought provoking book will appeal to academics and students from a wide range of backgrounds working or interested in the technologies that are shaping our experiences of the future.

The Creative Revolution That Is Changing the World

Abstract: Since the dawn of humanity, we have developed creative technologies, tools that would support externally expressed creations, as ink, carving tools, or sounding objects. Creative technologies have always been the basis for human expressivity: to sustain self-realization, to raise self-esteem, to increase community bonds, and to create a better society. Also understanding technology as “anything useful invented by a mind” (Kelly, What technology wants. Viking Adult, New York, 2010) encompasses an idea of humanity inextricable from technology. Technology sorts solutions for problems, rises our adaptability, and functions as a second skin between the world and ourselves, as an “extended body of ideas” (Kelly, What technology wants. Viking Adult, New York, 2010, p 44). It is part of our culture and of our evolution and is responsible for what we are today.

Play Platforms for Children’s Creativity

Abstract: Children’s imagination and their natural need for exploration and discovery can be stimulated when they are in contact with rich contexts and environments (Van Scoter et al. 2001; Van Scoter 2008); this inherent tendency offers an enormous opportunity for researchers and designers to develop tools that unleash children’s potential, involving them in creating meaningful projects (Papert 1993). Research on this field has highlighted that well-design technological tools for children need to be compelling, support exploration, encourage creativity, develop curiosity and promote interaction and collaboration with peers while being simple and intuitive to use (Plowman et al. 2012; Resnick et al. 2005; Resnick and Silverman 2005).

t-stories: improving and expanding t-words

Abstract: This paper describes the reengineering t-words, a tangible interface that aims at promoting children's collaborative and playful exploration of the oral language. t-stories, the new version of the interface, is composed by 10 client modules and a server module; each module has a slot on the top surface for placing paper cards (that can be customized) and a surface for drawing on the bottom. t-stories allows recording and reproducing audio as well as drawing, or writing on its surface. Additionally it allows recording and playing audio based on NFC tags, which can be stuck to different surfaces or objects, and used in various scenarios, e.g., record a story on a tag and stick it to a drawing. Children can use the interface to carry a wide variety of language related activities, and choose how they want to hear them (e.g., specific sequences or the whole story). This paper describes the new implementation of the interface and presents an intervention that was carried at kindergarten with a group of 18 children, aged between five and six years old.

Record, play, go...

Abstract: This workshop aims at stimulating children's oral language skills by involving them on playing and creating different language games or activities using the t-stories interface. The interface allows recording and playing audio on the t-stories' modules, as well as recording and playing based on identification with NFC tags that can be used as sticker on objects, paper, or other materials and placed in different locations. After the presentation of t-stories by the workshop facilitators, children will have the opportunity to explore the interface on their own, then they will be asked to participate in different language games, whereby they actively create their own content. Afterwards children will be challenged to imagine and create activities for their peers.